Wireless connectivity (e.g., BlueTooth. 802.11) is most often used in a client/server system architecture, where data captured by the client is forwarded to the server for aggregation with other data and subsequent processing. In part, this has been due to the limited computing resources of the most mobile clients. Technology developments have now made possible significant local computing resources, even for the smallest and lightest clients. It is also often the case that the ability of these client devices to connect to servers requires long-range wireless connectivity, and this is not supported universally. The combination of the availability of shorter-range wireless connectivity with significant local computing resources makes a new computing architecture possible: that of a spontaneous geographically proximate group of computers that agree to collaborate on a specific task. Software (e.g., JXTA, available at www.jxta.org) is now available to coordinate this spontaneous group.
A new class of applications is also emerging: applications that use real-time sensory data to make decisions about how to act on the user's behalf. These applications are referred to in the computer science literature as “context-aware.” However, these applications are limited to data obtained from sensors connected to the same platform as that which runs the application, or from sensors that can be connected to that platform via wired or wireless means.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,423 issued to Chand discloses behavioral models of distributed sensors, these behavioral models being predictive of future state. The models are used to predict failures in the system. U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,339 issued to Naganuma et. al. describes the centralized extraction of information from a multiplicity of control devices, and the transmission of certain derived information factors back to the control devices.